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By Rob Des Cotes
In all the travels of the Israelites,
whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out;
but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out – until the day
it lifted. So the cloud of the LORD was over the tabernacle by day, and
fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel
during all their travels.
Exodus 40:36-38
Being brought up on the shores of the St. Lawrence
river taught me a lot about the art of navigation. I watched the large
ships zigzag their way through the islands that dot the river from Montreal
to Kingston. There is a method in how they are guided in this process that
I have come to recognize as very similar to the way God uses to guide us in
our lives.
In order to steer a ship safely around the
islands, the captain is guided by lights on the shore towards which he must
aim his craft. As he sets its sights towards one of these lights the ship
appears to be heading towards that shore. Once they have made their way
past the island however, another light comes into view on the opposite
shore. The ship now changes course and steers towards the new guiding light
until, once again, it reaches the point, past the next island, where
another light on the opposite bank comes into view. Throughout this
process, though the ship appears to be heading towards the shore, this
target only serves its purpose until the second light becomes visible
– a light which would never have come into view had the ship not
moved in the direction of the first light.
God often guides us in similar fashion. We
feel certain that we are being led in one direction only to find another
option suddenly become evident to us – one that we would never have
noticed had we not begun moving in the direction of our first objective.
This can be disconcerting at times, especially if we’ve become
attached to our first assumption
As with the Israelites in the desert, when the divine
cloud lifts from above our tabernacle we know that the Lord is inviting us
to break camp and follow Him.
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It is natural, in times of spiritual movement,
for us to try and second-guess God. We think we know where we are
going and we start making plans for our arrival. Sometimes our
foresight proves accurate, but often it is problematic. We want to
participate with what we assume to be God’s direction and we get
confused when the cloud of divine guidance stops, or suddenly changes
direction.
In the desert, it is apparent that the Lord was
simply teaching the Israelites how to heel. When he moved, they moved. When
the cloud stayed over them, they did not set out until it lifted. What
appeared to be aimless wandering in the desert was, in truth, a pilgrimage
in the precision of obedience. It was an exercise in faithful obedience to
the movements of God.
Like the Israelites, God often leads us in
indeterminate ways. Sometimes he uses ‘lights’ on the shore of
our vision to move us forward to another position. But it’s important
to remember that these lights are not necessarily our final
destination.
We shouldn't be surprised if, in the course of
our movement, for no apparent reason, the Lord suddenly seems to change our
direction, or even stops us abruptly in our tracks.
If we anticipate this as normal in the course of our
spiritual direction, we will more easily welcome such change in plans as
simply a part of learning to be obedient to the often-unpredictable, but
always purposeful, movements of God.
Rob Des Cotes is a spiritual director and pastor of
Fairview Baptist Church in Vancouver, B.C. He teaches Contemplative
Traditions at Trinity Western University, as well as courses on
spirituality and the arts at Carey Theological College.
Options Spring 2008
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